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Pirillo - Don’t Let Software Die

Interesting post regarding TuCow's decision a while back to stop updating Blogware. It reminded me a little of VFP in that it's a company that has decided to stop updating one of its software packages.

Chris' comments on the letter:>> What worries me most about building communities on closed platforms is that as soon as those platforms change direction or stop innovating, you’re locked into a toolset that has nowhere to go but down

Whoa! Does this sound like VFP and FoxPro? Read on...

>> Tucows has given absolutely no indication that they’re interested in opening the platform at all - leaving you in more of a no-win situation.

You can't fault Microsoft for not wanting to open up the VFP engine - as that has given a lot of its other products some definite improvements but the re-licensing of the xBase components certainly does show that they were interested in not killing it outright. Indeed, I think Microsoft deserves some kudos for a lot of the openness they have shown recently (VSX, etc).

Before you criticize my "blind support", of course, it's for the good of their business. Why else would someone do anything? You want developers to be using the Visual Studio Shell, to make their development "home" beyond everything else. But it's great that they have opened it up to let others create their own environment within it.

>> My “continued support of Tucows” is completely contingent on what they decide to do with Blogware now… aside from abandoning it. Don’t let software die, please? If nobody wants to pick up the ball and run with it, at least you would have given them the opportunity to do so.

At a recent Microsoft event, I ran into some developers who offered the comment "When was your last version?" (or something to that effect). My response? "If you're waiting for Microsoft to be the only one to improve a product's offering, then you're in the wrong business". That isn't a slant against Microsoft - but rather against those who would say "well, it can't do it out of the box so therefore, I'll wait for it to do it INSIDE the box".

Microsoft has offered FoxPro developers this - "you can't have the rubber that makes up the ball, but here's the ball - run with it."

So when people ask what's the latest version of FoxPro, I simply say "VFPX". There has been and will always be more innovation inside a product's community than just what is inside a product vendor's corporation. And that is good for the entire community. If you ever get into a situation where the only people offering new features or uses for an (existing) product is the actual company making it, be forewarned.

(note: I say existing because obviously that is very often the case for startup products)

The only thing we have to figure out is how to ensure people can continue to purchase VFP proper...can a third-party organization possibly get a "distribution license" for perpetuity?

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wOOdy said…

Hi Andrew,

There's also another part of Microsofts decision to end FoxPro's development: There's a huge damage to the economy. Last week I had a discussion with one of our multinational customers, where we have a mission-critical application running with several thousand users worldwide. This software is in constant development due to the ever changing needs, and over the last 10 years we had the perfect tool as each version of VFP allowed us to just recompile and go on. Now we are faced with a complete rewrite (of course not today, but somewhere in the next 5 years or so). This means that the whole investment of this customer has to get payed again!

Now lets do some math:Say there are only 10.000 VFP-based developers worldwide, who each sold about 100.000$ worth of work per year. Over the last 5 years (this would be the VFP8/VFP9 cycle), this group made about 10.000 * 5 * 100.000 = 5 Billion$ work, which is now obsolete and has to get repayed by the customers again, who are taken by surprise, because you are used to a constant enhancement of VFP-applications. (Those numbers are surely way underestimated, for example my customers are faced with a total of 9 million Euros loss)

Just because MS doesn't take a longterm responsibility for their product.

I wonder how long it takes until a big customer is taking action and sues MS for that damage.

What's interesting here is the breakdown of people. Yes, I think it's understandable that the Fox community is getting older.

Another factor is the growth of the mobile and web environments taking over development. These environments really do push people towards the newer non-SQL or free SQL/hosted environments but more towards hosted storage options like Amazon and Google. A tool like FoxInCloud that helps MOVE existing applications to the cloud inherently competes with those environments.

But FoxInCloud also allows developers to extend their application further by giving them a starting point using Javascript and the basic CSS (such as Bootstrap). If you're not rebuilding your application from scratch, it's certainly a great step forward.

In a move that will be sure to anger open source (or rather anti-paid software, anti-Microsoft open source) zealots, Microsoft is planning to buy GitHub.

A year ago, I mused about why Microsoft would shut down CodePlex and how the world needs competing source code repositories to be strong. I'm not the only one per this Slashdot article :
"...people have warned about GitHub becoming as large as it did as problematic because it concentrates too much of the power to make or break the open source world in a single entity, moreso because there were valid questions about GitHubs financial viability...." - Jacques Mattheij

I will be interested in seeing this play out - whether developers jump ship or not. Have all the efforts Microsoft has made in pushing towards open source be seen as genuine or will all the zealots jump ship or maybe even attack?

Microsoft's comment about why they shut down CodePlex referred to how spammers were using CodePlex. Well, GitHub has its own …

I just received an update for Office 365. It certainly includes some cool features - including starting in one environment and picking it up in another environment. In recent years, I've certainly enjoined the use of Continuity on a Mac and in fact, I feel spoiled being able to start a message in one environment (even Google) and then finish it off on another. This has become some pervasive when we were reviewing our most recent backlog at a client site, a similar feature was added to the current workload.

But with web applications, the trend is to reduce the amount of software on a client machine. I used to have automatic backup for all of my machines (thanks Carbonite!) but these days, many of my machines don't need anything beyond the core OS and some basic applications. Certainly that's the feeling with Chromebooks and even the lightweight aspect of many iOS apps. The functionality is mostly in the cloud.